Safari in Tanzania February 2004

Africa is such a complex country that one really can't understand it without a diverse set of experiences. Thus, the day to day interaction needs to be balanced with a special expedition, and with considerable guidance, we took our Safari in Tanzania.

Our plane is a fully scheduled commercial flight - but as you can see, it's not much bigger than a general aviation plane.

The other side however is that they are very friendly and accommodating. When we left an item on the plane, we were able to contact their office by cell phone, and they turned the plane around to bring the item back to the airport.

Our first day was spent in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. This is a wildlife preservation area, and is in the center of a crater, so there's "a ton" of wildlife in a fairly small area. When you arrive at the Ranger Station (a 2 hour drive from the airport), our guide buys our visit pass while you get an overview of the geology from the resident ranger.

As we drove to our hotel for the evening, we passed some baboons, then the elephant shown here. Please note, I did not use my fancy long lens to get this picture, the elephant was this close to the car.

We stayed in the Serena hotel, a very nice hotel facing east into the crater. We'd set an alarm as we needed to rise, shine, breakfast and get into the car by 8, but at 6:30 the sun rose and I was out on our porch getting this picture.

At 8, our guide (Simiton) was waiting for us with our safari car. It took nearly an hour to get to the bottom of the crater (it's not that far, just that steep).

Three Hundred pictures later we came out of the crater. Needless to say, not all of them will appear here, so if you really want to experience Safari, you need to go, not just browse.

There's actually more bird variety than animal. The Kori Bustard shown immediate right is not something we are familiar with. The flamingos are often shown in zoos, but not in the concentrations you can see in the crater.

There's a lot of Gazelle (antelope) in the park. This picture shows the Grant's Gazelle (no stripe on the side). There's also a large variety of small game in the park like the Golden Jackal (taken with the long lens, then digitally zoomed as well).

Like the Ostrich photo, you'll see the back of many animals as while they are not afraid of cars, they still like to keep their distance. But we did manage to capture the Thompson's Gazelle "checking us out".

For those who like the details, the bulk of the Safari pictures were taken with my Canon Digital Rebel camera, using the 75-300 zoom lens in full automatic. Because of the often back-lit situations, I've had to adjust contrast in the computer, so colors may not be perfect, but seem very close to my memory.

Large animals are present as well. The most prevalent (other than the antelope varieties) are the Cape Buffalo. And, when you drive to the Hippo Pool, there are many (most of which just look like brown rocks of course).

The Hippo Pool is surrounded by Egrets (from a distance, that's the best spotting aid). For some reason, they all decided to move at once, and ended up using the Hippos as their repository for the nonce.

There was more bird variety around the Hippo Pool than just the Egrets. To the far left you will find the Yellow Bellied Stork and immediately left is a Heron (which specific variety was not recorded in my log).